ALBANY -- The ex-roommate of former Albany River Rats hockey player Robert "Bobby" Hughes told jurors Thursday his onetime teammate recently suggested it would be "better off" if he did not testify at Hughes' sodomy trial.

"He didn't want me to come," Harrison Reed, 22, a fellow Canadian who roomed with Hughes in Bethlehem between September 2008 and April 2009, told Assistant District Attorney Shannon Sarfoh in Albany County Court.

Reed, now with a Colorado Avalanche affiliate, said during cross-examination that Hughes, 22, reached out to him on the Facebook social networking site. He said Hughes effectively suggested that he not come to the trial.

The remark surfaced on the first day of testimony in the case against Hughes, a Toronto area native accused of sodomizing a 39-year-old woman in Delmar in October 2008. If convicted of committing a first-degree criminal sex act, he faces up to 25 years in prison.

In opening statements, Sarfoh said Hughes sodomized the woman when she was drunk and disoriented between Oct. 18 and 19. In turn, defense attorney Robert Molloy told jurors Hughes acted like a "jerk" and "creep" after having a one-night stand with the woman -- but committed no crime.

Reed testified he was returning from a hockey game when he spotted a woman slouched outside the apartment complex where he and Hughes lived. He said she later knocked on his door asking for Hughes, appearing drunk.

The woman "didn't seem normal," he testified. Molloy later questioned Reed about a statement he made to a private detective in which, according to Molloy, Reed said the woman appeared to have had a few drinks but was not drunk.

The allegation could be key because the prosecution contends the woman's state of mind made her unable to consent to sex.

Sarfoh told jurors the woman went to My Place, a bar and restaurant in Delmar, on Oct. 18, 2008, with a friend and the friend's boyfriend. Sarfoh said the woman started talking to Hughes there. She said Hughes offered her and her friends River Rats tickets.

Hughes and the woman left after the other couple, Sarfoh said.

She said Hughes, in his statement to Bethlehem police, described the woman as "incredibly intoxicated" and apparently "on drugs." She said the woman was on anti-anxiety and depression drugs at the time, but not to excess.